Shin Okuda’s Chairs: Understated but Whimsical

Shin Okuda hails from Fukuoka in West Japan. But it’s in Los Angeles, where he set up his studio, that his furniture has garnered a discreet but persistent cult following.

Okuda makes beds, low tables and wardrobes, but it’s his line of chairs that attracts most attention. The designer has been developing them since 2014 as part of his brand Waka Waka (borrowing the name from singer Fela Kuti) and displays his pieces at Iko Iko, his wife’s boutique/gallery.

His birch chairs, relatively understated in appearance, set themselves apart due to their cylinder back. It’s a homage, Okuda explains, to the imaginative and daring nature of the Memphis Group, a boundary-pushing movement in the design world which was born in Milan in the 1980s and of which he is a passionate admirer.

This fanciful touch aside, Shin Okuda’s chairs remain functional and organic above all, in the tradition of Japanese design. They are also refined to the extreme: the wooden elements, carved with a goldsmith’s precision, interlock naturally, without the need for screws.